Capturing the soul behind someone’s eyes when they are completely lost in their own world is something I feel we all try so hard to understand but yet we can barely understand where we ourselves go when in that trance like state. Capturing both the people experiencing this state as well as what may be going on inside their head and the distorted view through the eye of the mind whilst intoxicated or experiences whilst suffering from mental health have been my main focuses. My setting includes the main location of being at a bar and the droopy lost faces you can find whilst being inside them. This feeling is something I feel we all, if not the vast majority of us can relate too. The blurry visual effects and the intensified colours are where I found the inspiration for my colour palette.
My studio practice uses drawing, acrylic and oil paints as well as oil pastel and chalk.
The contemporary human experience with its balance of awareness and repression of mental illness and understanding provides context for this work as it catches people in vulnerable situations that might otherwise be overlooked in real life. For example a lonely man or woman sitting in a bar drinking.
We as humans face a greater challenge than other organisms as we are confronted with more reality. This can be too much for some of us to handle and therefore we have acquired more ways of escaping it, examples of this are daydreaming and of course alcohol.
I am captivated by the experience of both mental illness and substance abuse and I really enjoy trying to make my own visualisations come to life as well as representations of what could be seen through the minds eye of others.